novel which forms the basis of the plot. The genesis and development of Hamlet can be studied to advantage, since the English translation of the Norse tale and the first quarto are given in full in the second volume of Dr. Furness's edition. A very useful compendium of the stories, or, at least, a reference to the originals, is given in Dowden's Shakspere Primer.

VII. HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE DRAMA

The development of the Elizabethan drama and its position in the social life of London, and the tone and character of Renaissance society, are special subjects indirectly bearing on a comprehension of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets. Symond's Shakespere's Predecessors, Ward's History of English Dramatic Literature, and Sidney Lee's Shakespeare's Life and Work throw considerable light on a subject, to approach which intelligently we must discard most of our ideas about modern cities and the modern theatre and form a conception of the sixteenth-century London. We usually form our notions of the period from the plays themselves, and are apt to give a romantic tinge to an environment that must have had its commonplace, everyday features, like any other years of this working-day world, though its dramatic expression was so highly imaginative. We should remember that, though the poet was for all time, the plays were written for his age. When we consider, too, that the plays were written for a certain kind of stage, their astonishing vitality is more evident to us, for they alone do not grow old-fashioned,' and are still eminently playable, though not in the least mechanically adapted to the methods of modern acting. The criticism we wish to review usually considers them as detached specimens of beautiful literature existing in an ideal world rather than as practically actable plays. They

are both, and some knowledge of the stage and the audience and of the dramas preceding 1600 puts them in a truer relation to the humanity of their age and of ours. Such knowledge is difficult to acquire, for it demands imaginative power. It cannot be acquired en bloc simply by diligence in learning facts. It may be regarded as, if not a major department of Shakespearean criticism, at least as a very useful minor.

VII. THE DOUBTFUL PLAYS AND QUESTIONS OF DIVIDED AUTHORSHIP

There are a number of plays, like the Two Noble Kinsmen and Pericles, in which Shakespeare aided another writer or another writer aided him. The détermination of the respective parts is a matter of great delicacy, and is effected by consideration of style largely by the percentages of eleven-syllable lines and run-on lines in the different portions. This very difficult question is then decided by the extension of the methods already alluded to, but forms no part of our general subject.

CHAPTER II

CRITICISM OF SHAKESPEARE BY HIS CONTEMPORARIES AND UP TO THE RESTORATION

SHAKESPEARE came to London to live in the year 1585 or 1586. His three children were all born before the earlier date. There is no record that he revisited Stratford before 1596. He left London and returned to his native village as a permanent home about 1611. In the interval he had written thirty-one plays and helped in the composition or writing of five or six others, had written two poems of considerable length and one hundred and fifty-six sonnets. He is first alluded to by the playwright, Robert Greene (who died in September, 1592) in rather an ill-natured way, in a pamphlet entitled, 'A Groat's Worth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance,' which shows at least that he was attracting attention as a writer. That the tone of this reference was resented by some of his friends is proved by some apologetic words penned by Henry Chettle in December of the same year, in the preface to another pamphlet. Chettle says that he is sorry that he did not moderate the expressions in the original pamphlet, which he edited, as he 'might easily have done,' because' divers of worship,' i. e., several people of worth, have told him, what he had noticed himself, that the man in question was 'civil in his demeanor and excellent in the quality he professes.' That Shakespeare is the man alluded to as an upstart crow' in the original pamphlet is evident from the fact that Greene says, 'he is, in his owne conceit, the only Shakescene in the countrie.' Greene was of course jealous of him as a young writer, but Chettle

alludes only to his 'excellence in his qualitie,' that is, acting. At this date, however, he had done nothing more than to help in rewriting three parts of Henry VI, which came out in March, 1592. Love's Labour's Lost, probably his first complete play, may have been written, but in the expression 'bumbast out a blank verse as well as the best of you' Greene evidently refers to a historical play and not a graceful comedy, nor does it seem probable that the expression refers simply to acting. There is, however, in this reference to Shakespeare's early work no hint of literary criticism. We can gather from it, however, that Shakespeare had begun to write, and that his work was good enough to arouse the jealousy of older men.

The next six years was a period of great activity and rapidly rising success, for in 1597 the young man, though but thirty-three, was able to buy a large house in Stratford. In 1598 Francis Meres brought out a little book entitled Palladis Tamia, in which is the famous reference to the dramatist-poet.

The English tongue is mightily enriched and gorgeously invested in rare ornaments and resplendent abiliments by Sir Philip Sidney, Spenser, Daniel, Drayton, Warner, Shakespeare, Marlow, and Chapman.

As the soule of Euphorbus was thought to live in Pythagoras, so the sweete, wittie soule of Ovid lives in mellifluous and hony-tongued Shakespeare; witness his Venus and Adonis, his Lucrece, his Sugred Sonnets among his private friends.

As Plautus and Seneca are accounted the best for comedy and tragedy among the Latines, so Shakespeare among the English is the most excellent in both kinds for the stage; for comedy, witness, his Gentlemen of Verona, his Errors, his Love's Labour's Lost, his Midsummer-Night's Dream, and his Merchant of Venice; for tragedy, his Richard the Second,

Richard the Third, Henry the Fourth, King John, Titus Andronicus, and his Romeo and Juliet.

As Epius Stolo said the Muses would speak with Plautus' tongue, if they would speak Latin; so I say that the Muses would speak with Shakespeare's fine filed phrase if they would speak English.

We gather from the above, and from the seventeen other contemporary references to Shakespeare given in Halliwell's Outlines, that the popular reputation of the poet was as great in his lifetime as at any subsequent period, not only among playgoers but among lovers of poetry. Among scholars and among the literary people he was apparently not held in as high estimation as he has been since the seventeenth century. A popular reputation is usually ephemeral, but in the cases of Shakespeare and Bunyan it has proved lasting. A contemporary reputation among writers and scholars is achieved by good work, but it must be good work in the conventional fashion. They are more shy of new methods than are those who read or look at a play for the sake of being touched or amused. In the seventeenth century the Latin and Greek authors were recognized as models. The authority of the Latin language was very great. It had been the recognized medium for jurists and philosophers and publicists for a thousand years. Its acquirement was the centre of education. The study of Greek was introduced into English universities late in the sixteenth century, and the beauties of Greek literature made a great impression on receptive minds, and it, too, soon was regarded as authoritative on points of literary art. Men are very apt to overestimate the value of what they painfully acquired in youth, much as persons to-day plume themselves on their accurate spelling of English words. Phrases in a foreign language have a peculiar flavor of